GARAGE MURDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 100, 29 April 1940, Page 5

GARAGE MURDER.

MECHANIC BATTERED.

MYSTERY IN MELBOURNE. MOTIVE NOT EVIDENT. MELBOURNE, April 20. James Charles Edwards, 47, motor mechanic, was battered to death in his garage at a busy business centre in Burke Road, Hawthorn East. Two customers 6eeking week-end petrol supplies found Edwards' body sprawled through the doorway of a lavatory in a corner of the garage. Headquarters and suburban detectives, headed by some of the- State's best investigators, are conducting a keen hunt for the killer. Edwards was seen by neighbouring shopkeepers serving customers ehortly after 11 a.m. Ittss. than two hours later James Carter, of Burke Road, and another man found him dead. Unable to attract Edwards' attention, the men left their car and walked through the narrow garage. In a darkened corner they saw a man's feet and legs protruding through a lavatory door. The back of Edwards' head had been terribly battered, apparently with some blunt instrument. Two doctors told detectives he had died only a short time before being found. Because Edwards worked alone in his garage, police to-night had been unable to ascertain whether any garage tools of the blunt type were missing. They think he was probably killed with "a spanner or tyre lever. The [absence of kqown motive makes the jdetectives' task more difficult. Private Grudge Theory, i The possibility that Edwards was i killed for money is discounted by the Ic discovery, after a search, of his cash ti \ intact. i A private grudge is an alternative theory being closely followed. I

The detectives think Edwards was working at his bench at the end of the garage, and about 75 feet from the. street, -when his attacker crept in. The killer then continued to batter the back of Edwards' skull as he lay helpless on the ground. Edwards had been in the business only eight months. He graduated to the garage from a small backyard business he conducted at the rear of his home in Barker's Koad. Hawthorn.

One. of the first men to go to the garage after the crime was discovered was the man who induced him to buy the business.

When detectives went to Edwards

home to inform the murdered man's widow of his death, they found a small family party celebrating the birthday of one of the three young children.

Edwards was a native of Greenhithe, Kent, England. He had planned to assist his widowed mother and sister to come to Australia shortly, but? poor returns from the business were making the effort very difficult.

The dead man had a permanent eye injury received while on service with the Air Force in England in the last war.